Monday, 19 November 2012

Sky At Night

We had a rare clear sky a the weekend that coincided with the Leonid meteor shower (well one day late actually). I've not seen a meteor shower since my youth when I lay on the lawn (slightly inebriated I suspect) in the beer garden of a local pub.

I've always had an interest in the night sky and had been considering photographing a meteor shower for some time. I'd done my research, but had not managed to find a clear night on which a shower was due. All right, I'd usually forgotten to check my diary and missed most. So on discovering the news of a meteor shower I took my camera outside into the garden just after midnight to see what I could manage.

The Milky Way

I located the area of the sky the meteors should be seen and set-up my camera with a wide angle lens to maximise the chances of capturing a meteor in the sky. I set-up the camera's intervalometer to make continuous exposures for 2 hours in the hope that I would capture a meteor or two in that time.

By now my eyes had become well adjusted to the dark and I became aware of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, so clear overhead along with a fantastic number of stars. The local council have recently been turning off the street lights at midnight as part of it's austerity measures to save money and this has removed a large part of the light pollution that usually hides most stars. It was too much to resist and it wasn't long before my camera was being repositioned!

I included some of my house for perspective. A neighbour's outside light was illuminating the wall of the house (have they not heard of austerity?) and the warm glow gave a nice contrast to the cool dark sky above. Happy with this image I turned the camera back to the meteors and re-stared the intervalometer. I planned to leave it for a couple of hours before bringing it in so retired to bed for a little sleep.

What, No Meteors?

The next morning I woke to see the first rays of sunlight coming through the curtains. I'd slept in! The camera was covered frost but the memory card contained over 250 images. I imported these into my computer and impatiently scanned through them looking for a meteor. Not a single one! However the images I did have made an interesting, if brief, time-lapse video of the earth's rotation.

Undeterred by the lack of meteors the experience has given me plenty of enthusiasm explore night photography (still and time-lapse) further. I have a few ideas for suitable locations. Now all I need to work on is rehearsing my explanation for lurking suspiciously in the local church yard in the dark for 3 hours in case someone should call the local constabulary!

No comments:

Post a Comment

I am a Somerset based photographer with a passion for the countryside. I specialise in landscapes and seascapes of the West Country of England but my work takes me to many other areas of the UK including South Wales and The Lake District.
My images have been used in books, magazines, travel guides, wall art, greetings cards, calendars and more around the world and I have written a number of articles for the photographic press.
I exclusively use professional digital cameras for my work. However, until recently I used transparency film and medium format and 5x4 large format view cameras. Using the large format camera taught me to take a more thoughtful and methodical approach to making landscape images which enables me to immerse myself in the landscape.